How can art engage interactivity? Perry Hoberman’s work Cathartic User Interface (1995, 2000) is mentioned in Siegried Zielinski’s Deep Time of the Media as a work that draws attention to the computer interface which is supposed to disappear. The CUI has a rack of keyboards at which viewers can throw balls as if at a carnival. Depending on what input they hit they get different images projected onto the work. For Zielinski, the logic of interface design is to become transparent (so we can do work) and artists like Hoberman remind us that the man-machine symbiosis is not that easy. Hoberman develops “dramaturgies of opposition.”
In an interview in the defunct art orbit, “Loosen Up the Loop”, Perry Hoberman talks about interactivity and seems to be taking issue with Manovich’s view that a painting can be interactive,
“I am happy to argue with anyone who says a painting is interactive because each person thinks different things when they look at it. I think the word becomes meaningless if you use it too broadly.”
Hoberman has a fairly open view of interactivity and nothing resembling an agenda. Rather he deals with the computer with humour, notably through his various alerts. But I could be in error.
